DETECTED SPIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 July 1942, Page 3

DETECTED SPIES

TWO EXECUTED IN BRITAIN ONE A BRITISH SUBJECT FROM GIBRALTAR. THE OTHER A BELGIAN NATIONAL. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) (Received This Day, 9.45 a.m.) LONDON, July '7. The Home Office has announced that two enemy secret service agents have been executed at Wandsworth Prison. They were Jose Estella Key, a British subject, born at Gibraltar in 1908 and Alphonse Louis Eugene Timmerman, a Belgian national, born at Ostend in 1904. Key’s function was to observe and record the movements of British land forces, warships and aeroplanes in and around Gibraltar and to send information to the enemy. When arrested, he possessed, information which had been recorded for transmission to the enemy. Timmerman, a ship’s steward, came to Britain last autumn, posing as a refugee from Nazi-occupied territory, and produced documents to this effect, but his real mission was that of a spy. He was detected before he could do any mischief and eventually admitted, that the German Secret Service sent him to Britain to find out secrets of naval, and military importance. Secret writing material, including special crystals for making invisible ink, was'found in his possession. Timmerman, in addition to offending against the laws of Britain, was a traitor to his own country.